Making a House a Home: Transitions

Oct 29, 2018
3 min read

Transition \tran(t)-ˈsi-shən - the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.

Autumn has arrived. The leaves are turning the most brilliant orange and gold. The black bird migration has finished. And the fields are harvested. It has been just over a year since I moved from canola and oat fields to corn and soybean ones. The kilometers are finally translating into miles and Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit. And my husband and I still bump into random linguistic comparisons - decals or dee-kals? Comparable or comp-rable? Roof or ruff?

Thankfully, total home renovations in Canada or USA look pretty similar. A while ago I wrote about The Mess and since then we have taken our home through some amazing internal transitions! After our New Years flood, we ripped out the carpets and let them dry out - thankfully they were salvageable! We continued to work around our ruined wood floor (which as I mentioned in the last Lustron post, was replaced with snap board flooring), installing reclaimed kitchen cabinets that came from a friend's own home renovation.

I sanded and painted them with a gorgeous Sherwin-Williams’ Peppercorn Grey. When we put up the cabinets in place of the old Lustron kitchen ones we realized that the original house had abnormally high upper cabinets! Even thought both of us are 'tall' people, I still need a step stool to reach the top shelves. We both love how the height of the cabinets created a larger feeling to our L shape kitchen. No more galley kitchen!

The kitchen sink, washer/dryer, bathroom sink and tub were all hooked up and all leaks fixed! Next the living room was given barn wood accents around the inset window and to frame the TV - which was the large hole left from the Lustron mirror and bookshelf. Twelve rounds of mudding, drying and sanding in the cold and dark was what it took to make it into the beautiful display feature today - just saying!

Other additions included the creation and installation of two custom barn doors in the master and utility room - the wood came straight from an actual barn tear down and Addison built them that same day. The white paint is original! Addison also built custom raw edge bookshelves in the office/guest bedroom for ALL my soon-to-be unboxed books.

After the carpets were laid again and the pipes were fixed, we moved all our belongings in again and spent our first night in our home on March 13! Praises! Although it was chilly (the furnace was still out of order) and we lived out of a microwave for weeks, it was such a triumphant transition. And bless all of you who live your whole home renovation in your renovation.

The next day, March 14, the snap floor was laid - in a day! Addison designed the hood vent in place using recycled wood that matched our kitchen table and a few weeks later with load of gratitude, he and his friend installed the kitchen’s subway tile backsplash.

Even as I recall all of the frustration, creativity, resolve, and successes of transitioning from torn out walls and leaky pipes to pretty backsplashes and gorgeous shelving, it seems like just yesterday we walked into our project for the first time. Soon I will share with you MY FAVOURITE part of our home journey - visually representing 'us' in our home!